Galesburg couple’s son found after going adrift in Pacific

Tom Loewy

Friday

Nov 27, 2009 at 12:01 AMNov 27, 2009 at 4:51 AM

In the darkest hours, Jim and Beth Harmon found themselves standing the hallway just inside their front door, staring at framed photographs of the son they thought they lost to his abiding love. Blond-haired, 25-year-old Luke was independent and daring from the day he was born. The ocean was his love — first love, really. Now Luke was lost in a 24-foot-boat somewhere in the Pacific, the object of a massive search.

In the darkest hours, Jim and Beth Harmon found themselves standing in the hallway just inside their front door, staring at framed photographs of the son they thought they lost to his abiding love.

Blond-haired, 25-year-old Luke was independent and daring from the day he was born. The ocean was his love — first love, really. Wandering in a haze all day and night Monday and most of Tuesday, Beth found herself lingering in front of the picture of a little-boy’s first trip to the ocean.

Four-year-old Luke’s silhouette was famed by dark sand, tumbling waves and the brilliant orange-and-red hues of a sunset. Her first born had always been a bit of a gypsy, and had grown into a man unafraid of packing up his car and living life as he discovered it.

Jim found something in a shot of 11-year-old Luke, climbing out of the water with a mask and snorkel in his left hand and a temporary tattoo on the shoulder of his left arm. The picture captured his only son’s wry smile and bright blue eyes. Luke was a kid who met the world with those eyes wide open. He was the man who took blind kids on outdoor adventures and befriended Rastafarians before he was old enough to drive.

Now Luke was lost in a 24-foot-boat he and friend David “Fredo” Valby had been hired to sail from Makapu’u Point on the Hawaiian island of Oahu to Hilo on the big island of Hawaii. The journey, Luke’s first extended trip on a sailboat, was supposed to last 30 hours and the duo planned to keep in regular contact with friends and family.

But no one had heard a word from Luke since Monday, the very first day of the trip. He had called his fiance Allyson O’Brien around 9 a.m. Hawaii time.

Jim and Beth didn’t sleep Monday night. The hours passed slowly. By Tuesday evening their daughter, Mia Harmon, and friends gathered at the Harmons’ home in Galesburg.

The United States Coast Guard started a massive search for the Luke and Fredo Tuesday afternoon. So had Chris Clarke, the owner of the sailboat.

Hopes rose every time the phone rang inside the Harmon house, only to fall when the voice on the other end said the men and the boat were still missing.

Adventure and Danger

Luke surfed for the first time after he graduated from Galesburg High School in 2003.

“As a graduation present, I took him on a trip from San Francisco down the coast highway to Ventura,” Jim said. “Some old friends of mine brought out the surf boards and Luke just loved it.”

It was no surprise, really. Luke had been around and in the water for as long as he could remember. Family trips centered on destinations like Florida, Jamaica, Costa Rica and Hawaii. The ocean and Luke got along just fine.

After graduation from Illinois State University in 2006, Luke and Allyson moved to St. Louis and he took a job as a registered nurse in Barnes Hospital.

“Luke became a nurse because he knew it would give him freedom,” Jim said. “He knew he could go anywhere and get a job.”

And that’s just what Luke did. This summer, he and Allyson packed up the car and moved to South Carolina. It was near the Atlantic Ocean. In September, the other side of the world beckoned. The couple moved to Oahu and Luke took a job at a Veterans Administration Hospital.

Luke never had much real experience on a sailboat. But in Oahu he befriended Fredo, an experienced sailor near his age. The two placed notices stating their availability to sail boats for hire and hit paydirt when Clarke needed to get his boat, the J Bird, from Oahu to Hawaii.

Fredo, Luke and Allyson spent Sunday night on the sailboat, getting used to the vessel in preparation for Monday’s departure. Luke promised Allyson he would call often and if he couldn’t contact his parents, she would relay the duo’s status charting the Pacific Ocean.

Luke called a few hours after they left. Fredo called later to say the ocean was rough and they were making a short stop in Lanai, the Hawaiian island roughly one-third of the way between Oahu and the big island. The men said they planned to sleep for a few hours, then continue south and east into Alenuiha’ha Channel, the waters between the south edge of Maui Island and north edge of Hawaii Island. Then they would sail around the northern crest of Hawaii and turn south, traveling down to the eastern coast city of Hilo.

Luke and Fredo never called again during the journey. As they entered Alenuiha’ha Channel they encountered 15- to 20-foot swells, even though reports never suggested rougher-than-usual water. Alenuiha’ha is also known as “I’ll-end-you-ha-ha channel” and has been referred to as the most dangerous channel crossing in the world.

The duo had not made it far into the channel when the J Bird’s rudder broke. With its sails up, the boat began to spin. The big swells capsized the sailboat. Luke was washed into the cabin, then somehow flung to the edge of the bow when the weighted hull righted the boat. Fredo pulled him to safety.

The men lost their cell phones and the J Bird’s radio was destroyed when the sailboat turned over.

Fredo had the presence of mind to take down the sails and use them as a sea anchor to limit the boat’s drift. He also took the boat’s running lights off and hooked them to a generator, put them on a pole and fashioned an improvised strobe light. By the time night fell Monday, Luke and Fredo were adrift in the Pacific, engulfed in a blackness neither one had ever experienced.

Around midnight Monday a cargo ship passed the J Bird, saw the strobe and circled the boat, then moved off. In the light cast by the strobe, Luke saw sharks swimming alongside the sailboat.

Fredo remained confident they would be rescued. After the sun rose Tuesday, the two planned to ration what food they had and to catch some of the tuna following the boat.

The day passed slowly. The ocean was a vast, empty space.

Rescue and Thanksgiving

While Luke and Fredo faced the watery unknown, another kind of grim reality started to set in at the Harmon house.

“I kept thinking about what I would do if Luke was dead,” Jim said. “What was the rest of my life going to be like without him in it?

“I imagined the grief passing, but life was never going to be the same without him in it.”

Beth couldn’t stop thinking about her son as a little boy.

“I kept remembering all the things we talked about when he was little,” she said. “He was so curious and he became such a good man. He helped others. During all the calls I made to Chris Clarke, and all the calls he made to me, I kept telling him ‘I hope you get to meet Luke. You’ll really like him.’ I told this stranger stories about Luke.

“I kept asking, ‘How are we going to handle this if he is gone? How are we going to do this?’”

The sun set Tuesday in Galesburg. Jim and Beth had no idea what happened to their son, his friend and the sailboat that carried them.

While Jim and Beth's despair deepened by the hour, Luke and Fredo got lucky.

According to a news release from the U.S. Coast Guard in Honolulu, Hawaii, the crew of a Coast Guard C-130 search plane spotted a disabled sailboat 50 miles south of Lanai at approximately 6:45 p.m. (Hawaii time) on the last legs of a search pattern before they were due to return to Oahu to refuel.

At exactly 8:54 p.m. in Galesburg, the phone rang in the Harmons' home. Beth answered. On the other end was Coast Guard Capt. Barry Compagnoni.

“He said, ‘I’m calling you to let you know we found the boat’,” she said. “I was speechless for a moment, but it seemed like forever. I asked about Luke and Fredo. He said ‘Luke and Fredo were still on the boat and the Coast Guard was determining whether to airlift them by helicopter or reach them by boat.’ Then he said he would call me back.”

Luke and Fredo had spotted the C-130 and fired a flare to alert its crew. Both were healthy.

The C-130 crew remained on scene until the helicopter arrived, and at 7:15 p.m. Luke and Fredo were hoisted to safety. At the time, rescuers reported strong winds from the northeast pushing the vessel southwest and farther from Lanai.

“When we arrived on scene the two sail masts were in the water and the boat was swaying violently in the water,” said Lt. j.g. Jason Gross, an HH-65 rescue helicopter pilot, in the Coast Guard’s news release. “After we lowered a rescue swimmer onto the vessel, we determined the best course of action would be to have the two men swim away from the boat and then we lowered a basket into the water and hoisted them from there.”

It was the end of a massive joint-agency search with the Hawaii Fire and Police departments on the Big Island and the state of Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources. Hawaii County officials conducted exhaustive shoreline searches and DLNR agents inspected marinas on all islands in search of the vessel Wednesday.

Air crews scoured the coastlines of Lanai, Maui, Kahoolawe and much of the Big Island on a search that covered more than 10,000 square miles.

At 11:18 p.m. in Galesburg, Capt. Compagnoni called one last time. He told Beth her son and Fredo were safe aboard the HH-65 rescue chopper.

Thanksgiving had come a couple of days early in the Harmon house. Luke called briefly after the chopper landed. Then he called his parents at 3 a.m. and told them the entire story.

At 4 a.m. Wednesday, Jim and Beth lay down to sleep for the first time since Sunday night.

“The worry kept us awake,” Jim said. “Then we couldn’t sleep from the joy. I think, maybe, we got four hours of sleep.”

Beth said that this Thanksgiving, "what we are thankful for is pretty simple.

“We have our family back complete. Our son is safe.”

Tom Loewy can be reached at tloewy@register-mail.com.

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